Customer Reviews

Wieland

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This Modern Library edition is the finest available paperback edition of Wieland. The cover art is compelling, the margins are wide enough to notate, the paper is of decent quality, the text is authoritative, Caleb Crain's introduction is even better than Norman Grabo's introduction for Penguin, and, as if that were not enough, we finally get a couple of Brown's oustanding short stories--not the lame, too-often anthologized Somnambulism, but Thessalonica, an astonishing, apocalyptic tale of civil strife, together with several other pieces worthy of note. As an appendix, we get the viscerally appalling, absolutely hair-raising, newspaper story which Brown fictionalized as Wieland (one wonders whether King and Kubrick read it too for snowy axe chase in the Shining).

These days, one rarely hears of Charles Brockden Brown unless one happens to be a literature professor/student. Brown has somehow managed to disappear from the radar, but I smell a revival in the future.
I absolutely loved this book. Not only is Wieland the first American gothic novel (1798), but it combines elements from the seduction novels that were also popular at that time. And more importantly, this work speaks to the precariousness of America as a nation at the time of writing. The book is loaded with metaphors, right down to the names of the characters.
Throughout the novel, battle lines are being drawn between religious belief and the hard science of the Enlightenment. The author, in many ways, shows us the many gradations between light and dark--but most of all--draws a very interesting parallel between Clara and Carwin, the only two narrators. "Wieland" proper is directly followed by another piece called "Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist"...you must read these two pieces in conjunction in order to realize the full gravity of Brown's genius. If you are willing to commit to a close reading, you will quickly find that things are not always what they seem. You will also likely begin to realize a bizarre parallel between the two narrators, which you may find deliciously surprising if you are anything like me.
The book was actually fashioned after a true story about a man who killed his wife and children in "the name of God." If that doesn't interest you, I don't know what does! If this book tells us anything, it is that we must rely on all of our senses, not just one, if we want to survive. In this work, characters rely heavily on hearing alone...and many pay severely for it.
The Modern Library edition is a bit expensive but it is a terrific copy and includes the actual newspaper article describing the crime---not all of the publications of Wieland do this.
The only other thing I want to mention is that there are some genuinely creepy things going on in this book, and the beauty of it is, none of it is supernatural. The psychology of man is a very complex thing, indeed, and this novel proves it.
Very satisfying and highly recommended.

The Modern Library has done a wonderful job with this package of Charles Brockden Brown, featuring Wieland and Carwin the Biloquist. The stories themselves have been covered adequately in other reviews, so I won't spend time discussing the importance of the first American novel, or Brown's ingenuity. One thing that's not discussed much in reviews is the fact that this 1798 novel is told by a female narrator imbued by Brown with a character that would do any modern woman proud. But the power of the novel lies in Brown's exploration of complex psychology. I've never studied the connection, but my bet is that Henry James owed a lot to this novel.

If you're going to read Wieland, and if the quality of a physical book matters to you, this is the edition to buy. The quality of the book is the highest you'll find in a softcover. Even the cover is stunning. The production quality is better than any competing edition. Many other editions use old printing plates. The print in this edition is new, crisp and clear and the paper is worthy of a hardcover book. (If you don't care about production quality, you can spend less for the same words in another edition.)

But there's another consideration if you take literature seriously. Not having seen the book itself, I made my purchase decision almost solely on the fact that Modern Library includes the newspaper article which inspired Brown to write the story. There is no modern book or movie that beats the gut-wrenching violence of that article. It's a sad reminder that our culture and society have invented nothing new in gruesomeness and insanity since 1796. I suggest reading the article before you read the story itself - it will disabuse you of any notion that Brown manufactured a plot beyond the pale. Even if you don't care about the quality of paper or print, that news article may be worth the extra dough you spend on this edition.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. It's worth the $23 I paid for a softcover book. This one will stay in my library.

A man's mysterious death by spontaneous combustion and the injuries from it. A woman hears voices whispering in her closet, but when she opens the door, she finds nothing there. Her brother experiences what he thinks is the voice of God, ordering him to commit horrible crimes to prove his devotion.

Sounds like elements from a Hollywood horror movie? They're actually some of the mysterious and frightening things that happen in this early American horror novel, written by a man who was also a religious scholar and one of America's earliest feminists. Like a lot of early American novels, the style is somewhat effusive, veering between staid rationality and near-hysteria, and it's somewhat intricate sentences may be a bit long-winded to some modern readers. I've seen it compared to Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King, but I think it's more fair to compare it to Henry James or Nathanial Hawthorne, since the horror is generally more psychological and a bit understated. But it's that understatement which makes it all the more chilling...

I'm a collector of early American religious fiction, (my oldest book is from 1826) and a friend recommended "Wieland" to me as one of the earliest American novels. I found it interesting, both as an example of the early Gothic genre and as a sort of Americana.

The phrase "sort of Americana" indicates one of my issues with the book. While the protagonists are American in the sense that they are born here and the action mostly takes place here, their outlook is essentially European. None of them need to work for a living, and their life of leisure is that of European aristocrats, beautifying their estates with mock-Greek temples and pursuing European patents of nobility when older family lines are reputed to fail. Some people are merchants and others are landowners, but no one is a mere farmer or a laborer or even a doctor or lawyer.

In addition, the writing style is labored, copying the European style of works such as "The Castle of Udolfo". No word of one syllable is used when a synonym with two is available, and the more elaborate the language, the more emotional the scene. Even a reader such as myself, who enjoys orotund phraseology, finds it very heavy going.

What makes the book worth reading is the story. Based on a true incident, "Wieland" tries to understand both the external circumstances and the interior mental state of a man who commits terrible crimes for reasons of religious conviction. To accomplish this, Brown posits both an external trigger (a ventriloquist who convinces the main character that he's hearing a divine being) and a hereditary tendency, but still, the crimes and their basis seem to be, sadly, peculiarly American--based on the idea that an individual's impression of God's Will has to be more correct than law, tradition, or even the express words of the Bible. We're still getting in trouble in the same way--and sometimes to the same terrible effect.